News Topic: Economic Perspectives

I've been a skeptic for some time about claims that we have a student loan "crisis" in the United States. For individuals mired with student loan debt, it is very much a crisis, of course. ... Read full article

Lately I have been teaching courses with names such as "Global and Economic Justice" and "History, Impacts and Regulation of Consumer Credit" instead of "Bankruptcy," "Secured Transactions" and "Chapter 11 ... Read full article

Prior to the crash, only a very few macro-economists were studying consumer borrowing and fewer still were investigating inequality of income or of wealth as an important macro-economic factor. Work in macro-economics is done at academic institutions, the ... Read full article

I recently discovered a not-so-new paper that provides a useful answer to a question I've asked before :  Who benefits from consumer bankruptcy, and to what degree? This is a real challenge for policy-making, and well-supported answers are essential ... Read full article

In preparation for some upcoming projects with sociologists, including my new collaborator Rob Mayer (Utah) and on another project, Alan Burton (UNM Sociology professors and UNM law student), I am beefing up on my sociology research. Alan directed me to a ... Read full article

Sometimes you can beat the door down with efforts to get Federal and State officials to tackle problems, but at the end of the day, locals can best get the job done, quietly and quickly. ... Read full article

That I still think the "safe harbors" as currenlty drafted are a bad thing ? ... Read full article

"What is the optimal consumer bankruptcy law?" Now that's an abstract first line that grabs my attention! I've thought about this question for most of my academic career, and I've struggled to find solid bases for an answer. Now, ... Read full article

Some thoughts on how much faith we should have in the debt markets, and whether they are actually markets at all, over at Dealb%k . ... Read full article

... Read full article

I'm going to wade into unchartered Slips waters today and head into Bitcoinland. I've been trying to understand Bitcoin from a payment systems perspective, where it has an interesting problem and solution:  double spending.  The lesson in all of ... Read full article

I'm quite sure China's plea to “ ensure the safety of the Chinese investments ” will bring certain members of of the House to their senses.  ... Read full article

The NY Times has a pretty significant error in its reporting on the Summers vs. Yellen Fed Chair race. It says that Yellen was the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, which was Countrywide's regulator. That's wrong. FRBSF was ... Read full article

Again, this is me posting on Adam Levitin's behalf because he is away from Internet access as he owns an Apple computer (often a redundant statement). Adam writes: R. Glenn Hubbard and Tim Kane have an op-Ed in the NYTimes proposing a federal ... Read full article

As the CFPB gears up to regulate arbitration clauses, a timely article by Omri Ben-Shahar has been posted on ssrn. ... Read full article

Some readers might enjoy this PBS video about a Northern Vermont company that helps people weather financial storms with small loans. Rhino Foods in Burlington found that employees in financial strain were not as good at their jobs and that the small ... Read full article

Over at VoxEU , economists Daniel Aronson and Eric French have a discussion about the their research of the effects of a minimum wage hike. ... Read full article

... Read full article